Here’s a poem by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke that I’m living with at the beginning of this year. This poem brought me my theme of ‘moving forward’ I’m working with at the start of this New Year. A few things strike me about this poem. First, Rilke’s ‘moving forward’ is something that has been earned with the hard work of self-reflection, of letting in endings and the darkness around us and inside us. Second, this moving forward that Rilke writes about isn’t a hyper-motivational-rah-rah moving forward. It has nothing to do with external success. In fact it has nothing to do with any kind of success or achievement. It’s wordless, it’s slow, it trusts in fruition happening organically on its own, it’s intimately connected with art and nature. It’s only concerned with connection with the deep parts of being alive – the parts that don’t get much press in the news but are the life-thread to our happiness. The deep parts of my life pour onward, as if the river shores were opening out. This moving forward isn’t surface stuff. Rilke isn’t talking about red carpets, political intrigue, winning an Oscar, having a hit record. It’s the deep parts that are moving forward. And they’re not being pushed. The dam is removed, the waters of his life are released. We’ve all spent time by moving water. It’s effortless. And that force of moving water is so hard to stop, to fight against. It keeps going and going and going. Each time we allow the deep parts of our life to pour onward the process continues with less effort each time. It seems that things are more like me now, Nothing feels better than feeling a part of the larger whole. And nothing feels worse than to be cut off from the world and feel alone in whatever dismal feeling we’re trapped in. Rilke knows he’s moving forward because things are more like him now. That I can see farther into paintings. Remember being a child? Nature, music, art – everything seemed so rich, deep and poignant. We lose that in the passage to adulthood and then regain it step by step with self-reflection and a persisting desire to have a feeling connection with the world we live in. We know we’re there when we can hear farther into music, see farther into art, see the precious beauty in the simple life we live each day. I feel closer to what language can’t reach. That’s a brave line for a poet to write. And brave for any of us to even acknowledge this in the modern culture we live in. This one line touches on the deepest, most important parts of being alive, the place that is so fundamental, words don’t work. With my senses, as with birds, I climb into the windy heaven, out of the oak, Here’s upward movement, something we long for. But he’s not flying upward. He climbs. Climbing isn’t easy – it’s slow, hard, deliberate work. And then to climb right out of the oak into the ‘windy heaven’. That can be pretty unsettling if we haven’t spent much time in the territory. Much like the feeling when… in the ponds broken off from the sky my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes. That last line is what first drew me to this poem. What an image! And the first month or so I lived with this poem that sinking was disturbing. If you haven’t spent time ‘standing on fishes’, it feels awful. The work I’ve done the last few months with endings lets me let in the ‘standing on fishes’ experience more. Moving forward means the barriers of separation come down. The ponds were once part of the sky, we’re entering the pond. Let’s move forward into this life, calmly, quietly, letting our feelings sink into the deepest, most important parts of our lives. Quixote Consulting helps teams move forward with collaborative team building, music team building, charity team building and interactive training in resiliency, influencing, and assessments such as MBTI, StrengthsFinder, Firo-B and DiSC.
